Use is often made within the manufacturing industry of conveyors for moving objects from, for example, a production unit to packing or distribution stage. In the packing of foods such as into milk or juice in disposable cartons, the ready-filled cartons are conveyed from the filling machine to a distribution unit in order that the cartons may more readily be handled in the distribution stage by the consumer.
In general, cartons are conveyed from a filling machine on a single conveyor extending from the filling machine. It is occasionally desirable to marshal the cartons traveling on this single conveyor onto two different conveyors such that it will be possible to cause a certain number of cartons to be distributed in one way and the remaining number of cartons in another way. Objects on two conveyors may also be led into one and the same distribution unit thereby increasing output capacity.
However, problems have previously been experienced in this art in exactly marshalling cartons or other objects in a given distribution ratio. Furthermore, prior art distributor devices have not proved capable of marshalling objects moving their way into or out of the distributor, but instead it has been necessary to run the distributor until completely empty. This results in an output capacity that will be very low.